Apple Is Greener Than Greenpeace Says

Apple would do better in Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics if the environmental group would weight its scores for company size

By Arik Hesseldahl

I couldn't help but notice the timing. Only a day after the environmental activist group Greenpeace on Nov. 24 released the 10th iteration of its Guide to Greener Electronics, a new ad appeared on U.S. television screens touting Apple's MacBook line of laptops as the "world's greenest family of notebooks." The spot touts the MacBook's recyclable enclosure, low power consumption, and its lack of hazardous materials such as mercury.

Coincidence? Not a chance. Apple and Greenpeace have a history, not all of it pleasant. The computer maker has consistently scored low marks in these Greenpeace guides. This time around, Apple wanted to have a counter-message ready. Good thing.

Apple Outranked by Peers

As has been the case for several years, in the most recent Greenpeace ranking, Apple (AAPL) finished below the rest of its peer group, including Dell (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). In some categories, Apple outscored the other two; in others it fell behind; and the net result was a score of 4.3 out of a possible 10, compared with Dell's 4.7 and HP's 4.5.

As in past years, I take issue with Greenpeace's methodology (BusinessWeek.com, 3/29/07). While I generally agree with Greenpeace's mission to spur the computer and consumer electronics industry to clean up its products and practices, I still think Apple's not getting a fair shake.

Greenpeace takes issue with Apple's use of certain chemicals: brominated fire retardants (BFRs), used to coat printed circuit boards and prevent fires inside a computer, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is used in the plastic coating on cables. Apple has made some strong commitments to eliminate BFRs and PVC in its products, and has stuck to those commitments. In a lengthy statement on Apple's Web site, Chief Executive Steve Jobs says the substances have been eliminated from the iPod and the iPhone, and that the company is "on track" not only to eliminate them from the Mac by the end of the year, but to remove "all forms of bromine and chlorine throughout the entire product, not just PVC and BFRs." This improved Apple's Greenpeace score only slightly.

Preferential Treatment for Dell

Contrast that with Greenpeace's treatment of Dell, which according to Greenpeace has backed away from its commitment to eliminate the substances by 2009. And yet the company's score dipped only slightly. (Dell says: "We were among the first in our industry to set a goal to eliminate BFRs and PVC from our products as acceptable alternatives are identified. For all Dell products developed after June 2006, we've prohibited the use of all BFRs in plastic parts. We're also leading a number of cross-industry groups to help drive viable, environmentally responsible and cost-effective alternatives.…We're committed to eliminating BFRs and PVC as we identify acceptable alternatives.")

Greenpeace seems to have added to its scoring methodology a greater emphasis on carbon emissions than before, so the overall impact of changes, good or bad, to a company's policy on toxic materials is lessened overall. The group applauded Apple when in January it launched the first MacBook Air, which had the lowest presence of PVC and BFRs on the market, but didn't quite eliminate them completely. Had it been free of them, as Greenpeace said in a Jan. 18 press release, Apple would have been "an environmental leader." Now that it's closer than ever before to fully eliminating those chemicals, Greenpeace's scoring system feels like a football field where the location of the goal line keeps changing.